"Sarge, the Captain wants to see you. Right now."

"I'm coming."

The Captain looked perplexed. "John, the Colonel wants to see you."

"Yes, Sir? Any idea what it's about?"

"Well, it's not every day we get a letter from a French General."

John groaned inwardly. Maman's fingerprints were all over this.

He entered the battalion HQ with the Captain. The Colonel looked up. "Sergeant, what do you know about this?" And he handed over a letter.

It was a request that Sergeant Johnson of the 102nd Battalion be loaned to the Staff of General Matthieu of the 4th French Army, to serve as interpreter and assistant to Captain Wilson, liaison officer.

"Nothing, Sir."

"You didn't request this? He's the General who came here with a girl about two weeks ago."

"No Sir. That was as much a surprise to me as it was to you." John thought it better not to mention his mother's ties to senior French officers.

"You understand that this puts us in a difficult situation. Much as we'd like to help our French allies, we are desperately short of experienced NCOs. So if you have no objection, we'd like to keep you if we can." The Colonel had not shown John the Brigadier's covering letter, which was simply endorsed "Concur."

And it seemed to John that he was back at his office and old Mr. Thomson was asking him not to enlist. "Why am I always trying to accommodate someone else?" he thought. "Why can't I do what I want?" He'd done his share. Let others take their turn while he had a soft billet, and a chance to see Marie regularly.

"May I give you an answer in two days, Sir?"

"Certainly, my boy," replied the Colonel, relieved that John hadn't immediately insisted on being posted.

As they returned to the company, the Captain said: "And while you're pondering joining the fleshpots of the Staff - and I don't blame you - I need you to take a small party and run a reconnaisance."

"I'll take Lickers, if you don't mind, Sir. The fewer the better."

Two hours later John and Charlie set out.

"Are you going to take that French job?" asked Charlie.

It seemed there were no secrets in the battalion.

"I don't know Charlie. By the way, I've been meaning to ask you what you did before you enlisted, since you weren't trapping in the woods."

"High iron work. You know the bridge at Quebec? That was one job, then office towers in New York City. Some of them twenty stories or more. Most of the boys are Mohawks from Caughnawauga Quebec, and when I first started I had no French and they had no English, so we talked in Mohawk."

Now John got dizzy looking out third-story windows.

"I could never do that. You Indians must have a special knack for it."

Charlie looked at him with amusement. "The first time I went up I wanted to crawl along the girder. And I'm still not comfortable on the really high work. But I'm a Mohawk, and my pride won't let me show any fear. That's what it is - pride."

John knew that he had the answer for the Colonel. He would stay with his men. Not because the Colonel wanted him to, but because he himself wanted to.

Maman would be disappointed, he thought to himself.

Unfortunately so would Marie.